Marathon is the music looping around in the mind’s dusty recesses when you muster the guts to say what you know will get you beaten up. Marathon is music for anyone smart enough to be disaffected, smart enough to be angry.
Marathon’s first full length album— self-titled; due out in May on Reignition Recordings— is the audio autobiography of five kids well aware that growing up is tantamount to death; five kids who understand that inertia reduces their generation to stone; five kids who realize that dancing may be both our only true opiate and our only legitimate salvation.
Scattered throughout the “Bermuda Triangle” of upstate New York, the band formed in a fall 2002 fission incident when other punk/hardcore bands crashed and conflated. With bombastic vocalist Aaron Scott gleaned from NYC’s De La Hoya and accomplished guitarists Nat Morris and Brian Van Etten and seasoned bassist Jeff Interlicchia culled from Rochester’s Standfast, Marathon released their first EP, Songs To Turn The Tide, on Red Leader Records (Strike Anywhere). Soon after the EP’s release, Emmett Menke (of Spark Lights The Friction, None More Black) joined up to offer his seamless talents on drums. Relentlessly touring with bands like Fifth Hour Hero, Fire When Ready, The Break, Kudzu Wish, New Mexican Disaster Squad, Another Breath, Nakatomi Plaza, and No Trigger, Marathon sold thousands of copies of their debut EP. Their rising grassroots popularity and their melodic but heavy sound made them an obvious choice for local support to touring acts as diverse as Bane, None More Black, The A.K.A.’s, With Honor, and The Red Chord.
Now, with their brand new album in-hand, recorded and produced by John Naclerio at Nada Studios on the recently christened Reignition Recordings (formerly Law of Inertia Records), Marathon stand poised to infect the nation with their contagious musical honesty. Fantastically listenable and driven by melodic guitar leads and big, fast drums, the Marathon CD is host to incisive lyrics that actually complement the intelligence of the listener. While current music drowns in a cesspool of trite simplicity and banal subject matter, Marathon is the island oasis where you’d be happily stranded, just to have the refreshing feeling of music that makes you think. Covering everything from the pro-war, anti-love tactics of the Bush Agenda to the merits of voluntary homelessness, brilliant turns of phrase couple with a sonic onslaught that leaves you wide awake, eyes open and staring out onto the scorched and corrupted tundra of the future. But don’t be scared—Marathon will gladly be your hopeful tour guide as you survey our desolate destiny.